1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light emitting device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Light emitting devices using light emitting diodes (LED), laser diodes (LD) and the like have a small size with a high luminous efficiency, and can emit bright light. Further, such devices have excellent initial performance and high durability to repetitive operations of turning on and off. Accordingly, light emitting devices employing a light emitting element are used as various light sources.
In such light emitting devices, light emitted from the light emitting element is needed to be efficiently reflected in a desired predetermined direction. For this reason, many light emitting devices have a structure, for example as shown in JP2005-353914A (see FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 disclosed in JP2005-353914A), in which, a recess (cavity) is formed in a package or the like, defined by side walls made of a resin or the like and a bottom surface where a lead frame made of a metal is arranged with a resin portion, and a light emitting element is arranged on the lead frames in the recess. With such a structure, in addition to the light from the light emitting element directly reaching the upper plane of the recess, the light emitted from the light emitting element and reflected by the side walls or the bottom surface of the recess can be emitted outside of the light emitting device, and thus the power efficiency (luminous efficiency) can be enhanced.
As for a structure in which the metal frame is exposed in a smaller area at the bottom surface of the recess, JP2002-520823A (for example see FIG. 3 disclosed in JP2002-520823A) discloses a light emitting device in which a lead frame having an even thickness is bent to form a protruding portion (a bent protruding portion) on the upper surface of the lead frame, and the light emitting element is mounted on the protruding portion while portions of the upper surface of the lead frame other than the protruding portion is covered with a resin so as not to be exposed from the bottom surface of the recess.